One of Sweden’s most wanted criminals is arrested 1,600 miles away, police say

The head of one of Sweden’s biggest crime organizations, accused of instigating a surge in violent crime, has been arrested more than 1,600 miles away in Turkey, Swedish police said on Friday.

Police did not identify the man by name but Swedish media named him as 35-year-old Ismail Abdo, head of the Rumba crime organization and alleged to have been orchestrating operations from abroad.

Abdo is one of Sweden’s most wanted criminals and the subject of an international arrest warrant since 2024.

The Scandinavian country, once known for its low crime rates, has struggled for years to rein in organized crime.

Criminal networks are involved in drug and arms trafficking, welfare fraud, and regular shootings and bombings that have plagued the country in recent years.

The networks are also reported to have infiltrated Sweden’s welfare sector, local politics, legal and education system as well as juvenile detention care.

Police say the leaders of the criminal networks increasingly operate from abroad, orchestrating murders and attacks via social media and often recruiting young children under the age of criminal responsibility to carry out the attacks.

Abdo once led the Foxtrot crime network together with Rawa Majid — Sweden’s other most wanted criminal who was sanctioned earlier this year by the U.S. Treasury — and the two are suspected of having controlled large parts of the Swedish drug market.

But the pair fell out, and a new, violent chapter in Sweden’s gang wars began when Abdo’s mother was murdered in September 2023 at her home in Uppsala, the BBC reported.

Abdo’s Rumba gang has since waged a violent feud against Majid and Foxtrot.

Abdo was arrested in a raid conducted by Turkish security forces, police said.

“In a law enforcement operation in Turkey, Turkish police have today arrested a Swedish man who for many years has been suspected of drug-related crimes and instigating serious violent crimes in Sweden,” police said in a statement.

“The arrest is the result of targeted work over time between Turkish and Swedish judicial systems,” Mats Berggren, acting deputy chief at the Swedish police’s National Operations Department (NOA), said in the statement.

Sweden has been plagued by violence in recent months.

In April, three youths aged 15 to 20 were killed in a shooting in broad daylight at a hair salon in central Uppsala, about 45 miles north of Stockholm.

Just days before that, a mother and her young child were severely injured when a homemade bomb tore through their home, media reported, adding that a neighbor suspected of ties to criminal gangs had been the real target.

Earlier in April, two people were killed in a suspected gang fight in Gothenburg, while a renowned rapper was shot dead in a gang battle in the city in December.

Sweden was also rocked by its worst mass shooting in February when 35-year-old Rickard Andersson entered the Campus Risbergska adult education center in the city of Orebro and shot dead 10 people before turning the gun on himself.

The Swedish government has proposed new legislation that would allow police to wiretap children under the age of 15 in an attempt to curb the violence, according to the BBC.

According to global database Statista, Sweden had the third highest number of homicides involving firearms per 100,000 inhabitants in Europe in 2022, behind Montenegro and Albania.

Data from Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention show that shootings have declined since the peak year 2022 but the number of explosions have increased.

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